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A federal bill aimed at making it easier for police to get phone and internet subscriber information will aid investigators in catching rapists, child predators and organized criminals, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu said Friday.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop
, PNG

VANCOUVER - A federal bill aimed at making it easier for police to get phone and internet subscriber information will aid investigators in catching rapists, child predators and organized criminals, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu said Friday.

And Chu said police are not interested in "internet spying," but simply in finding basic information about suspects in serious criminal cases, like kidnappings, murders and cyber-bullying.

Speaking as president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Chu said he thinks the public has been mislead by critics about Bill C-30, a controversial bill introduced last February that is also called the "Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act."

"If we stand by and do nothing, criminals will continue to exploit today's technologies to criminally harass and threaten others and commit frauds, scams and organized and violent crimes with little fear of being caught,"Chu said. "Canadians need the same protection against criminals that other western democracies enjoy."

The new law would make it easier for law enforcement to catch cyberbullies, Chu said, though he wouldn't comment specifically on the case of teenager Amanda Todd, who killed herself earlier this month after years of online bullying.

"Bill C-30 also provides new legislation to help police intervene and investigate cyber bullying in their early stages to prevent needless tragedies," Chu said.

He cited several other examples where police have been hampered by their inability to get subscriber information quickly.

In one case, a sexual assault victim got her attackers' cell phone and police were unable to find out who the phone belonged until they could get a warrant 13 days later. The suspect fled to another province.

In another case, several suspect cell numbers connected with a kidnapping were obtained while the crime was on-going, but the company providing service refused to identify the subscribers without a warrant. Police eventually located two victims, one of whom had died while being held.

Chu said the procedures for getting court orders for subscriber information have become much more complex and take investigators valuable time away from their cases.

He said police chiefs across the country are concerned the bill is going to die without being debated or put to a vote.

"If we don't take a strong stance on this issue, Canadians will not appreciate the limitations that constrain law enforcement in the cyber world," Chu said.

He said police are currently using laws written in 1975 when everyone had a rotary phone and telephone directories had almost everyone's names in them.

"If a suspect lures a child using a landline, basic subscriber information is available in a phone directory," Chu said. "But predators don't use old technology. The parent of a child who has been lured over the internet will be told that the police search for their child is delayed because a warrant has to be obtained for basic subscriber inforamtion."

He said criminals, including those in gangs, are well-aware of the limits of current legislation and use those limits to stay ahead of police.

"If the laws from the 1970s are not modernized, then organized criminals will plan their killings and kidnappings using telecommunications providers who do not build into their systems the technical ability to be monitored for the purpose of gathering evidence," he said. "Terrorists will exploit these same gaps."

Service providers also have no obligation to retain information that might be relevant in a criminal case, Chu said.

"Victims who have been scammed or extorted over the internet will be told the electronic footprint linking the suspect to the crime has disappeared because the telecommunications provider has no legal obligation to preserve data," he said.

Chu acknowledged that one section of the bill is ambigous and should be re-written to make it clear that inspectors of telecommunications companies would not be able to access private information of subscribers.

Asked about possible police misuse of the information available in the act, Chu said the proposed law includes safeguards to prevent that from happening.

A federal bill aimed at making it easier for police to get phone and internet subscriber information will aid investigators in catching rapists, child predators and organized criminals, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu said Friday.

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